Thirteen Years of Land Capital Grants - Doris Duke Charitable ...

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DORIS DUKE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION Environment Program Rocky Fork, North Carolina. Greg Hutson. ACHIEVEMENTS IN LAND CONSERVATION: Thirteen Years of Land Capital Grants September 2011 Prepared by Lyme Timber Company, Mary McBryde and Peter R. Stein 1

DORIS DUKE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION

Environment Program

Rocky Fork, North Carolina. Greg Hutson.

ACHIEVEMENTS IN LAND CONSERVATION:

Thirteen Years of Land Capital Grants

September 2011

Prepared by Lyme Timber Company, Mary McBryde and Peter R. Stein

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation awarded its first capital grant for land conservation in

1997. The $5M grant was part of a historic public-private partnership to protect one of the

most important blocks of forested land in the state of New York, the Sterling Forest. With the

$5M grant from the foundation, partners were able to close a $55M transaction that conserved

15,280 acres of the Sterling Forest which today remains a treasured resource that provides

significant wildlife, scenic, recreational, and clean water values for the public.

Since that debut in 1997, the foundation’s impact on land conservation has been enormous. The

Environment Program has awarded land conservation grants totaling $108 million and helped

facilitate the protection of over 2.5 million acres of land in 26 states nationwide (see below).

These lands hold significant ecological value and provide critical habitat for some of the nation’s

most threatened and endangered species.

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

Land Capital Grants, 1997 – 2009

It is important to note that the foundation is one of only a handful of land conservation funders

that awards grants for land conservation acquisition on a nationwide basis. Consequently, a

decision by the foundation to invest in a specific region signals a significant ‘vote of confidence’

and often presents grantees with a unique opportunity to build momentum for land

conservation and to attract additional financial resources from both public and private entities.

Case Study:

Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee and Alabama

There are many landscapes that reveal a similar story, but the Cumberland Plateau may be one of the

places that best illustrates the catalytic impact of the foundation’s long term investment. For this

landscape, the foundation provided support for a range of conservation activities that led to

tremendous organizational growth among local and national land trusts, unprecedented collaboration

between conservation partners and with public agencies, extensive conservation planning that led to

landscape scale prioritization of individual parcels of land and ultimately, the permanent

conservation of high priority lands. In fact, of the 26 states in which foundation land capital funds

have been used, Tennessee ranks among the top five states for conserving the most acreage. Together

with the existing network of publically protected lands, these transactions have created a vast,

unfragmented landscape of conserved lands totaling over 175,000 acres.

History of Land Capital Grants

The core focus of the Environment Program has remained constant – the protection of flora and

fauna – but over the years, the program has applied different lenses to determine where to

invest its capital.

1997 – 1999: Geographies Associated with Doris Duke

In the early years, land capital grants were awarded in geographies with a connection to Doris

Duke, specifically, New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island. As described above, the initial

grant was project-specific and helped to protect the Sterling Forest, which is an important

public water supply for dozens of communities in New Jersey.

2000-2004: Ecologically Rich Geographies of National Significance

The Environment Program completed a comprehensive national scoping and analysis process

that evaluated the following criteria: biodiversity, species diversity, corridor/connectivity,

threat, existing protected land, land use and smart growth, and leverage. From this analysis, 22

potential focus regions were identified. After an extensive national, expert panel review and

additional screening by Environment Program and its consultants, six landscapes were

identified as highest priority: Coastal South Carolina, the Cumberland Plateau, the East Gulf

Coastal Plain, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Florida, and the Northern Forest of New

England. Capital funds were targeted to those landscapes.

2005-2009: Geographies Featuring Strong State Wildlife Action Plans

The State Wildlife Action Plans, which were required by Congress, provided the lens for this

period of grant-making. States that produced a spatially explicit map identifying the highest

priority areas for protection as part of their plans were eligible for funding (not all states

produced such a map). A series of meetings were held with pre-selected wildlife agencies to

discuss these map products and to assess the on-the-ground support and utility of these plans.

Grants were awarded to land trust partners only in states where the wildlife agencies had

produced or were in the process of producing such a map and intended to use it to guide land

conservation actions.

DDCF: Historical Lens for Land Capital Grants

Years Focus Geographies

1997-1999

Doris Duke Affinity Locations - Sterling Forest in NY

- New Jersey

- Rhode Island

2000-2004 Ecological Richness - Coastal South Carolina

- Cumberland Plateau (AL, GA,NC, TN)

- East Gulf Coastal Plain (AL, GA, TN, FL)

- Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (ID, MT, WY)

- Florida and Massachusetts

- Northern Forest (ME, NH, NY, VT)

2005-2009 State Wildlife Action Plans - Southeast (Al, GA, NC, TN)

- Upper Midwest (IA, IL, MN, MO, WI)

- Rocky Mountains (AZ, CO, NM, MT, WY)

- Pacific Northwest (ID, OR, WA)

- New England (MA, ME, NH)

2011 Climate Change Resilience - To be determined

Curated Grant making and Core Analysis

In addition to the screening described above, the Environment Program, with its consultants,

has designed a specialized process for soliciting land capital grants. This process, or curated

grant-making, falls between an open approach (request for proposals) and an invitation only

approach. After the initial vetting in which the DDCF lens is applied and specific landscapes

are identified as high priorities, an ‘on-the-ground’ assessment begins. Specifically, a rigorous

“core” due diligence is applied to determine the feasibility of putting land capital to work in a

specific region and to evaluate the likely success of potential grantees.

Core Criteria

Organizational Capacity - Do strong non-governmental partners (land trusts)

in the region exist

- Is there strong leadership within potential grantee

organizations

- Do potential grantee organizations and/or its

partners have the significant transaction

experience

Transaction History/Future

Opportunities

- Does the conservation community have a proven

track record in successfully completing fee and

conservation easement transactions

- Does a pipeline of future deals exist and is there a

critical mass of deal density in the coming years

Public Funding - Do stakeholders have a successful track record for

securing federal and state funding

- Track record for private fundraising

Conservation Planning - Do spatially explicit habitat conservation plans

exist

- Are new science based planning efforts in

progress/expected

Leverage Potential - Do state or local funding programs for land

conservation exist If yes, what are historic and

expected funding levels

- Is other private philanthropy (foundations or

individuals) interested in this region

Political Leadership - Does support for land conservation at the state and

local levels exist

- Are there any “champions” for land conservation

As part of the leverage assessment, the Environment Program and its consultants closely

evaluate potential opportunities to build on existing philanthropic efforts and/or to attract new

philanthropic dollars to specific geographies where a common interest exists. Because of the

foundation’s nationwide focus, there are a number of foundations whose support has repeatedly

provided significant leverage for projects in which the foundation has also supported. Though

not an exhaustive list, those foundations include: the Wyss Foundation, the Richard King

Mellon Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Merck Family Fund and the

Lyndhurst Foundation.

DDCF Land Capital Grants: Accomplishments

The impact of the foundation’s land capital grant-making over the past 13 years is truly

remarkable. The foundation has helped to protect over 2.5 million acres of land with

exceptional conservation values through 578 individual transactions. Below are several

highlights – both generally and specifically – that begin to describe the far ranging and

profound impact of the foundation’s investments.

Generally speaking, the land capital grants have achieved the following:

• Building wildlife corridors across large landscapes to facilitate species movement (for

example, Bismark Meadows in

Idaho is part of a 1,100-acre

wetland meadow complex

within the US Fish and Wildlife

Service's 2,200 square mile

Selkirk Grizzly Bear Recovery

Zone);

• Creation of buffers for national

and state forests and parks and

national wildlife refuges by

conserving private lands that are

adjacent to these existing

protected lands (for example, a

6,733 acre inholding in the Hells

Canyon National Recreation

Area and Imnaha Wild and

Scenic River or the Lieber

property in Loess Hills Iowa);

• Protection of working lands -

forests and ranches – that

provide critical habitat for

wildlife (for example, Black

Rocky Fork, North Carolina. Greg Hutson.

River Ranch in Washington, a 725-acre dairy farm located in the middle reach of the

Black River) ;

• Protection of critical habitat for sensitive, threatened and endangered species (for

example: sage grouse, grizzly bear, gopher tortoise, wolves, golden eagle, Yellowstone

cutthroat trout, Blanding’s turtle, owls, and many others);

• Conservation of unique and threatened ecosystems (for example, long leaf pine,

cottonwood forests, tidal marshes);

• Facilitation of landscape scale conservation and the preservation of large intact

ecosystems (for example, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Wyoming, Montana and

Idaho, Malpai Borderlands in Arizona and New Mexico, Northern Forest in New

England, Cumberland Plateau in Alabama and Tennessee, and the Montana Legacy

Project);

• Safeguarding areas with high biodiversity (for example, the Perdido River along the

Florida/Alabama border which is one of the most important free-flowing black water

rivers in the southeastern United States or property (2,000 acres) along the Coquille

River in Oregon which is the second largest estuary in Oregon, with tidal influence

extending 42 miles upstream and supporting the largest concentration of wintering

waterfowl between San Francisco Bay and the U.S.-Canada border);

• Protection of coastal rivers, lakes, estuaries, and wetlands from rapid coastal real estate

growth (South Carolina, Oregon, Washington);

• A focus on key watersheds to conserve lands that protect wildlife, habitat, working

lands, and clean water (for example, the Flint River in Georgia, Paint Rock in Alabama

and Tennessee, the Snake River in the Rockies, the Mississippi River, Henry’s Fork in

Idaho, and the Willamette in Oregon);

• Protection of inholdings in publically owned land (for example, the Milan Bottoms along

the Mississippi River);

• Connecting existing public lands through a mixture of fee and easement acquisition (for

example, the Northern Cumberlands);

• Spurring state and local investment in conservation activities in coordination with the

foundation’s Conservation Finance Initiative (for example, Iowa, Tennessee, Maine, and

Montana);

• Building critical linkages for species including, but not limited to, wolves, bison, elk and

deer to migrate between Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and the larger

Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem;

A few specific accomplishments include:

• The protection of Rocky Fork, approximately 9,000 acres within the Highlands of Roan,

North Carolina, an area defined as globally significant due to a high concentration of

rare species (the Carolina northern flying squirrel, spruce-fir moss spider, spreading

avens, Roan Mountain bluet, Blue Ridge goldenrod and rock gnome lichen) and

significant high-elevation communities. Rocky Fork lies within Cherokee National

Forest and abuts Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina, creating a vast unfragmented

haven for wildlife and providing a range of world-class recreational opportunities. It is

adjacent to more than 22,000 acres of wilderness and roadless areas protected by the U.S.

Forest Service, including the Sampson Mountain Wilderness, Sampson Mountain

Inventoried Roadless Area (IRA) and Bald Mountain IRA.

• Help to secure the 320,000-acre Montana Legacy Project, one of the largest conservation

projects in the nation’s recent history, which protected core habitat and critical linkages

that enhance the survival of several imperiled species within the larger Crown of the

Continent region, including grizzly bears, Canada lynx, and bull trout. This

transformational project generated hundreds of millions of public dollars for

conservation including a unique $250 million fund as part of the 2008 Farm Bill and

passage of $21 million in funding from the 2009 Montana Legislature by more than a two

thirds vote. Not only did this project create unprecedented public funding support, it

has also inspired national level foundations to make extraordinary gifts for wildlife

conservation in the Rocky Mountain West. Most notably, these gifts include a $35

million commitment from the Wyss Foundation and a $15 million commitment from the

David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The Packard Foundation is also supporting a $30

million program-related-investment (PRI) loan at 2% for three years.

• Protection of land that completes critical parts of the Appalachian Trail at both the

northern and southern ends:

o One of the parcels in the Moosehead Forest Project, the Roach Ponds Parcel, is a

critical missing link in the Appalachian Trail’s 100 Mile Wilderness. The deal

completes a two million-acre corridor of conservation land (the size of

Yellowstone National Park) across the North Woods of Maine.

o The Rocky Fork transaction North Carolina protected a property that is critical

for the 250,000 acre Appalachian Trail Greenway and connects hundreds of

thousands of contiguous acres of State of Tennessee owned lands.

• Protection of the headwaters of the Androscoggin River (over 30,000 acres) in New

Hampshire which is part of a landscape-scale project that builds on and buffers the

existing 26,000-

acre Umbagog

National Wildlife

Refuge. The land

also abuts and/or

is proximate to a

network of

existing protected

lands (13-Mile

Woods

Community

Forest, Pingree

Easement, and

Maine BPL lands

at Richardson

Androscoggin Headwaters, New Hampshire. Jerry Monkman.

Lake and Grafton Notch) that in total create a block of over 100,000 acres of

conservation.

• In Montana, the protection of key working ranches in two strategically located

geographies:

o

The Taylor Fork (approximately 3,500 acres protected) which is a large valley of

private land that abuts Gallatin National Forest and where conservation efforts

prior to the DDCF grant had been stalled for over 10 years;

The Madison Valley (approximately 21,000 acres protected) in southwest

Montana which is nestled between the Lee Metcalf wilderness area and the

Gravelly and Tobacco Root mountains contains some of the most valuable

wildlife habitat in the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

• Protection of Finch Pruyn lands in New York which spans a vast area from North

Hudson to the southern tip of Long Lake, connecting hundreds of thousands of acres of

“forever wild” Forest Preserve lands. Laced with 415 miles of rivers and streams, dotted

with 70 lakes and ponds, and saturated with 16,000 acres of wetlands, this beautiful

stretch of mountainous, temperate deciduous forest is vital not only to local ecology,

economy and biological diversity, but also to global climate stabilization.

• Protection of the 9,500 acre Cloudt Ranch that straddles the AZ-NM state line and is

located on the north-west side of the one million-acre Malpai Borderlands region in

Arizona and adjacent New Mexico and extending south to the Mexican border. To date,

the Malpai Group has protected 77,000 acres of private land which is in addition to

330,000 acres which has been protected on the Gray Ranch (now called the Diamond A)

by the Nature Conservancy.

• The Moosehead Forest Project, along with the Plum Creek transaction in Montana, is

among the largest conservation initiatives ever in the nation. The project includes four

separate but linked transactions, all of which include acquiring land or conservation

easements from Plum Creek Timber, LLC. The project will protect a combination of

ecological reserves and working forests totaling 406,989 acres.

• Conservation of approximately 12,350 deeded acres (and 30,000 acres of public

controlled land) in New Mexico that borders the northern edge one of the largest intact

landscapes in the American southwest (an additional 220,000 acres), which contains

functioning landscape-scale ecological processes, crucial wildlife corridors and linkages

to the northern Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico for species such as the jaguar, and

provides resilience to climate change impacts by virtue of its size and topographic

diversity.

Additional Activities

Beyond capital for land or conservation easement transactions, the Environment Program has

also awarded funds to support a wide range of conservation activities, including but not limited

to:

• Producing first rate, science based conservation plans for parts of the country (for

example, the Cumberland Plateau);

• Fostering collaboration among national, regional and local land trusts as well as other

partners, such as state wildlife agencies (for example, the Rocky Mountains);

• Dramatically heightening local or regional awareness of conservation priorities (for

example, the East Gulf Coastal Plain in the southeast);

• Building land trust capacity: hiring staff, opening an office, establishing an endowment

fund (for example, the Northern Forest);

• Spearheading county-based land protection efforts (for example, Gallatin County,

Montana).

These non-capital activities are often catalytic and combined with ‘doing deals’ helps land trusts

function at a higher level, specifically, by becoming more financially sophisticated (e.g. meeting

the required match, establishing loan funds), working at a landscape scale, conducting

conservation planning, and collaborating with other entities – all which lead to a more strategic

and proactive approach to land conservation.

Land Capital Grants: Financial Summary

Since 1997, the Environment Program has awarded roughly $108 million in grants for

permanent land conservation, of which approximately $86.5 million was capital for land

transactions (the acquisition of fee title or conservation easements). These funds helped to

protect over 2.5 million acres in 26 states. Grantees secured over $1.7 billion in match funding,

including over $900 million in public funding from federal, state and local programs that

support land conservation and over $780 million in private funds from other foundations,

private individuals and landowners (donative value of fee and conservation easement

transactions).

For every dollar awarded by the foundation, the total match was 20:1 (includes both public and

private funds), 11:1 for public dollars and 9:1 for private funds - far exceeding leverage

expectations. This outstanding leverage success is the result of a combination of factors

including: 1) the rigorous due diligence conducted by the Environment Program; 2)

experienced, highly motivated grantees; and 3) unique timing and political conditions that

created several unique opportunities to match various sources of funding (for example, the

Rocky Mountain Front and the Montana Legacy project in Montana, Cumberland Plateau in the

Southeast, Connecticut Lakes in New Hampshire, Sable Highlands and Finch Pruyn in New

York, and the Katahdin Forest, Moosehead Forest and the West Branch in Maine).

Note: For data used to create these tables, please refer to Appendix C: DDCF Land Capital

Grants Financial Summary

Land Conservation Funding By Source

1997-2009

Total Private

$780,396,492

Total Public

$946,221,909

TOTAL FUNDS (Public and Private): $1,726,618,402

Public Funding: Federal, State and Local

Local,

$34,366,321

State,

$362,256,768

Federal,

$385,782,672

Private Funding: Cash and Donation

Cash,

$315,413,443

Donation,

$452,724,955

Conclusion

The impact of the Environment Program’s land capital grant-making is staggering – over 2.5

million acres of ecologically significant land permanently protected and funds highly leveraged

by a very capable pool of grantees. Beyond acreage and leverage metrics, however, the full

impact of the foundation’s support must be viewed in light of the catalytic role that it has

played in the regions in which it has funded. Grantees often describe the DDCF grant as “a

transformative experience” – one that strengthens organizations, builds lasting partnerships

between land trusts, public agencies and landowners, improves science based conservation

planning and priority setting, and perhaps most importantly, accelerates land conservation in

critical geographies across the country.

APPENDIX A: LAND CAPITAL GRANTS SUMMARY, 1997-2009

Year Organization Geography Purpose Grant Size

1997 The Trust for Public New York Conserve Sterling Forest 5,000,000

Land

1999 The Nature

Rhode Island

Conserve ecologically significant 4,391,000

Conservancy

landscapes

1999 The Trust for Public New Jersey

Protect land in Northern and Central 8,400,000

Land

New Jersey

2000 Open Space Institute Maine, New Hampshire, New Conserve ecologically significant 10,550,000

York, and Vermont

landscapes in the Northern Forest

2000 The Conservation

Fund

Florida and Georgia

Conserve priority lands in the Red Hills

of Northern Florida and Southern

3,500,000

2000 The Nature

Conservancy

2001 The Conservation

Fund

2001 The Trust for Public

Land

East Gulf Coastal Plain:

Alabama, Georgia, and

Florida

Greater Yellowstone

Ecosystem: Idaho, Montana,

Wyoming

Greater Yellowstone

Ecosystem: Montana and

Idaho

Montana and Wyoming

2001 The Nature

Conservancy

2001 The Conservation Southern Appalachia: North

Fund

Carolina and Tennessee

2001 The Nature

East Gulf Coastal Plain:

Conservancy

Tennessee and Alabama

2003 The Nature

South Carolina

Conservancy

2004 The Nature

East Gulf Coastal Plain:

Conservancy

Tennessee and Alabama

2004 The Nature

Greater Yellowstone

Conservancy

Ecosystem: Montana, Idaho

and Wyoming

2004 The Conservation East Gulf Coastal Plain:

Fund

Georgia and Florida

2004 Open Space Institute Maine, New Hampshire, New

York, and Vermont

2004 The Conservation Southern Appalachia: North

Fund

Carolina, Tennessee, and

2005 Massachusetts

Audubon Society

2005 The Nature

Conservancy

2006 The Conservation

Fund

2006 Conservation

Resources, Inc.

2007 Iowa Natural Heritage

Foundation

2007 The Nature

Conservancy

Alabama

Massachusetts

Florida

Southeast: Alabama,

Georgia, North Carolina and

Tennessee

New Jersey (Duke Farms

vicinity)

Upper Midwest: Iowa, Illinois,

Minnesota, Missouri, and

Wisconsin

Rocky Mountains: Arizona,

Colorado, Montana, New

Mexico, and Wyoming

Pacific Northwest: Idaho,

Oregon, and Washington

Georgia